They rounded a few more corners and ended up on a very dank narrow street. Music pounded ahead and the chatter of people rose above it. Lots of people.
Veiron didn’t slow when he turned the next corner. A queue lined one side of the street, flowing towards her from the bright neon sign on the featureless brick wall of Cloud Nine. Half-dressed men and women cast dirty looks her way. Judging by their appearances, she and Veiron were going to fit right in if they made it into the club. A three hundred plus pound bouncer blocked the door, a mountainous man who almost made Veiron look small in comparison. That was until Veiron strode right up to him, towering a good six inches taller and a few inches wider.
The man didn’t give Veiron a dirty look. The black look in his dull pale eyes was positively friendly compared with the one he cast at her.
“Sinking low, my man.” His voice was so deep it rumbled through her.
Erin glared at him.
“Mind your tongue,” Veiron snarled and the man shrugged thick hewn shoulders and grunted as he shifted aside enough for Veiron to pass.
Veiron kicked the black doors open and music assaulted her, ear-splitting in volume and with bass so heavy it pounded in her chest and made her feel sick. She covered one ear with her hand and pressed the other against Veiron’s bare chest. His heart thumped steadily against it.
He manoeuvred through the dense crowd with her, his height giving her a clear view over the heads of most of the patrons to the dance floor. Dear God. What sort of pervert club was this? There was a little more than the usual groping and snogging going on. The men and women on the dance floor were close to taking things deep into the indecent exposure list of crimes.
Veiron covered her eyes.
It was too late. The sight of the near-orgy happening on the dance floor was seared on her eyeballs.
She grabbed his arm and pulled his hand away from her eyes. He scowled down at her. A threat? Was she supposed to interpret that look as a warning not to gawp at the perversion playing out all around her?
Score two for Erin. She had the man jealous. Why couldn’t she get the man naked? That was what she wanted to know.
He strolled through the crowd and Erin watched how they parted, fascinated by their reactions to Veiron. As he approached, everyone turned to stare at him, fear in their eyes, and moved aside, giving him a wide berth. She looked up at his face. He was scowling and his eyes looked crimson in the flashing lights of the club. Not just the usual touch of red that edged them at times, but complete saturation.
Veiron’s gaze remained firmly fixed ahead. They walked in line with the long curved black bar to his right. Bright colourful bottles lined the mirrored wall behind it and spotlights switched from white to blue to purple to red, washing the bartenders in those colours. Erin caught sight of her reflection, and frowned. She looked around and stared at a beautiful dark-haired woman as she passed. This one didn’t look afraid of Veiron.
The woman tossed a flirty smile in his direction. Veiron didn’t seem to notice.
Another one further in tried her luck but Veiron turned away and set Erin down beside the bar, his back to the blonde beauty. Erin positively seethed. What had the world come to when a man carrying a woman was still a target for whores?
Bitches.
Veiron leaned across Erin, his body shielding her from the brunt of the crowd, and flagged one of the bartenders, a young handsome brunet. “Water.”
Erin closed her eyes and melted at the thought. Water. She had never been one for her eight glasses a day but she had found a new love for plain boring water.
The man slid a tall cold glass across the black bar top to her. Erin stared at the clear liquid, mesmerised and deeply in love. She wasn’t sure whether to drink it in one gulp or savour it slowly like a fine wine.
She grabbed the glass and gulped it down. The cold hurt her teeth but she didn’t care. Veiron chuckled and she stopped, and slid her gaze across to him. He smiled at her, devastating, too sexy for words, and reached out. His hand was warm against her face and tender as he brushed his thumb across her cheek.
“Do you want to clean up?”
Did she ever. Even what was likely to be a grotty club bathroom seemed like a luxury spa to her right now.
“I’ll take that dreamy smile as a yes,” he said with a smile of his own and motioned to the bartender again. The man returned with a whole pitcher of icy water this time.
“On the house, Vay.” He grinned across the bar top at her. “You look as though you need it.”
Veiron grabbed him before he could leave. “You seen V around here tonight?”
The man nodded and pointed further along the bar.
“My gratitude, my man.” Veiron patted him on the back.
“So, Vay, who’s V?” Erin grinned when he scowled at her. “I take it I’m not allowed to call you Vay?”
He shrugged. “I would rather you called me Veiron.”
Erin frowned and poured herself another glass of water. “Be like that.”
Veiron huffed. “God Almighty, you are infuriating. It isn’t like that.” He rested an elbow on the black bar top, bringing him down to close to her height. “I don’t really like the nickname. Satisfied?”
“Not really. Why let people call you it if you don’t like it?” People had tried to pin her with nicknames and she had shot them all down, even the pet names her parents had used for her. Erin was a perfectly good name. Amelia didn’t seem to mind when people shortened her name. Each to their own.
“It pays to be friendly sometimes.” He sighed and scratched the thick stubble coating his straight jaw. What would he look like without those whiskers? He was handsome enough with them. Without them, he could probably lay waste to women with just a wink and a smile. “I’m not exactly welcome here.”
“Now I’m satisfied. So who is V?” She swigged her water, the cool liquid like bliss on her tongue and parched throat. She never wanted to drink anything other than fresh cold water for the rest of her life.
“Someone I don’t want you to meet but I think it wise that we stick together, at least until I know it’s safe here.” He straightened, his dark expression conveying the equally black feelings behind his words. Not jealousy this time. Not fear. A strange mixture of those two emotions, plus wariness and other ones that made him look as though keeping her with him was a struggle and all he wanted to do was keep her out of sight while he spoke to this V character.
He took a deep breath, his broad honed chest expanding deliciously with it and shattering her serious thoughts, and then waved a hand over his head. The action was more like a command, the sort of click of fingers you gave to a dog to get its attention.
Erin turned to see who he was signalling and found herself only a few inches from a pale, sharply dressed dark-haired man. His crisp black suit didn’t quite fit with the club, at odds with the scantily clad men and women. The man’s pale eyes slid down to her and his dusky lips curved into a sensual smile.
Veiron’s arm closed over her chest and he dragged her back against him.
“V,” he growled and the man’s icy gaze shifted up to him.
The man called V offered him a toothy smile that revealed canines that were either fakes or real and she was about to add vampire to the list of supernatural creatures that existed. After everything she had witnessed in Hell, nothing surprised her anymore. Vampires were probably just another type of demon after all, and she had catalogued plenty of different breeds of that particular species while waiting in her cell for visitors. The man in front of her was a vampire and the man at her back was a fallen angel, and who knew what else lurked in the club?
“Veiron. To what do I owe the pleasure? If the boss sees you here, she will not be pleased. You know her policy. No angels allowed, even if they are serving the right master.”
“Choose your words more wisely, Villandry, or we shall come to blows.” Veiron’s arm tightened across her chest and the vampire looked down at her, all charm as he smile
d.
“I never thought mortal females would be your style. She’s pretty, I’ll grant you that, but last I recalled your tastes were a little more wicked... like mine.” Villandry raked his pale eyes over her and then curled his lip in disgust. “You know, I still haven’t forgiven you for storming into my home and nearly exposing me to sunlight.”
“I apologised, didn’t I? It’s the most you’re going to get out of me, so get over it. It isn’t why I’m here. I have a business proposition. I need you to keep your ear to the ground and let me know if you hear about anything major leaving Hell in the next few days.”
Erin frowned. Had they come to blows over a past lover? Erin didn’t like the thought of Veiron fighting for another woman. She tried to break free of his embrace but he tightened his grasp and held her firm, pinning her back against the solid heat of his front.
“Sounds dangerous, and expensive.” Villandry signalled the bartender. A pretty thirty-something blonde woman came straight to him and set a martini glass filled with dark liquid down on the bar. He smiled at Erin, lifted the glass to his lips and drained it in one go. He set the empty glass back down on the bar. “I want her.”
Veiron snarled and his grip on her shoulder tightened. “No fucking way.”
“I admit, I had said that I wouldn’t date your cast offs again, but this one is mortal and I would make our few short hours together pleasurable.”
“Please.” Erin resisted the temptation to hold onto Veiron’s arm across her chest for comfort and courage, glad now that she hadn’t managed to escape his hold. “I wouldn’t screw you if you were the last... thing... on Earth or in Hell. Sleazeball.”
“Erin.” Her name was a low warning curling from Veiron’s lips and she leaned back against him, afraid that she had pushed the man opposite her too far. His eyes began to darken, the paleness swirling together with what looked like pure black under the flashing coloured lights. “She is tired. You could say she has been through Hell.”
That was a poor joke. She rolled her eyes at it.
The vampire still didn’t look pleased.
“I am sure we can come to some agreement. I will keep my ears and eyes open and will have my men do the same. If anything comes here looking for a tasty little human and her escort, I will let you know.” Villandry waved to the woman serving behind the bar again.
“Thank you.” Veiron managed to growl those words in a voice that said quite the opposite. He wasn’t grateful at all to the vampire and his death grip on her shoulder conveyed a deep desire to make the man pay in a very painful way for requesting her as his remuneration for services rendered. “Does Taylor still live in London with Wingless?”
Who was Taylor and who was Wingless?
Erin turned to look up at Veiron to ask him that question but her gaze caught on someone who chilled her more than the Devil.
She shrank back into Veiron’s embrace, trying to avoid the man laughing and talking to two women across the room. People streamed between them but he would only have to glance her way at the right time and he would spot her just as she had spotted him. She had already gone through Hell. Couldn’t someone up there cut her a break? She hadn’t seen her ex in close to three years, since he had got drunk at her twenty-seventh birthday party and made a pass at Amelia, and four of her friends. Her sister had lousy luck with men but it looked stellar compared with Erin’s own run of worthless boyfriends.
Her gaze shot over the heads of the crowd and found the pink neon sign for the women’s bathroom. Safety. She could hide there and clean up while Veiron finished his conversation with the vampire. He could come and get her when he was done and they could hightail it out of the club together.
A larger group of people entered the club and began drifting through it towards her. It was her chance.
“I’m going to use the bathroom,” she said it loud enough for Veiron to hear.
He nodded and Erin made a break for it, merging with the group.
She was halfway to the bathroom when someone grabbed her arm. Tightly. She thought it was Veiron changed his mind about her being alone in the club but the hand on her arm was too small. Erin slowly turned to find her ex, Adam, staring in horror at her clothes. His look only worsened when his dark eyes reached her face. She probably looked as though she had been caught in a volcanic blast and had starved while escaping.
The roughly chopped lengths of his dark hair hung over one side of his face as he gave her another once over and his grip on her arm tightened when he reached her bandaged feet.
“What on Earth happened to you?”
Erin wasn’t sure how to explain everything she had just been through without sounding as though she was crazy and she didn’t feel the need to explain herself to him anyway. She had called Villandry a sleazeball but he wasn’t a patch on this man.
“Get your hand off me.” Erin tried to twist free of his grasp.
He dug his fingers in even harder. “No, Erin. I want to know what happened. Christ, your face... your legs... where did you pick up all those bruises and cuts?”
“Seriously, Adam, get your damn hand off me!” It came out louder than she had intended and several people nearby stopped to look at them.
Adam pulled on her arm when she struggled and she clawed at his hand, trying to prise it off her. He was hurting her.
A deep growl curled out over the music.
The entire room froze.
CHAPTER 8
Veiron needed to work on his impulse control.
He knew it, and so did the hundred people who had stopped dead and turned to stare at him when he had unleashed an ungodly snarl in Erin’s direction.
Villandry made a grab for his arm to stop him but Veiron easily shook the vampire off and stalked across the rapidly draining club to the man who had dared lay his filthy hands on Erin and upset her.
Erin paled as he approached, her amber eyes going impossibly wide. The human male with his hand on her seemed frozen in time, his fingers locked around Erin’s slender wrist and his back to Veiron.
Big mistake.
The man should have remained cognitive enough to get his fucking hands off Erin and get the hell out of Dodge with the rest of the mortals in the club crowd.
Veiron came up behind him and politely tapped him on the shoulder.
The mortal male turned slowly and looked up at him.
“I think it would be best if you did as she asked and removed your hand from her arm before I remove it for you... and I mean that literally. I’ll give you one second to take your hand off her or I’ll chop the damn thing off.” Veiron grinned down at the little man, showing him that he was serious. He might have reined in his temper enough to speak to the flea without going nuclear on his arse but the tethers holding his rage at bay were beginning to twist and snap.
He didn’t want to lose it, not when it would reveal himself to Erin and place her in danger by alerting any of his kind nearby to his location.
The man released Erin’s arm but didn’t back down. He did the one thing in the situation that was guaranteed to push the button on the detonator of Veiron’s anger.
He squared up to Veiron.
“Did you do this to her?” the man positively growled the words and Veiron frowned down at him. One of the tethers on his rage pinged and snapped. Three more and this man was dead. “What sort of sick fuck beats a woman?”
Veiron’s blood boiled. He might be a Hell’s angel but he would never hurt Erin. He would never lay a finger on her in that way. He snarled. Erin looked as though she wanted to say something to defuse the situation but it was too late.
Ping. Ping. Ping. And his rage was free.
Veiron growled, locked his hand around the mortal’s throat, turned with him, and drove him across the room until his back slammed into the curved black bar.
He bent over the man, tightening his hold on his puny neck, and lowered his face so all the man could see was the fury blazing in his now red eyes. Veiron growled low in his th
roat again, the feral sound rumbling through him, and felt his teeth shift to sharp crimson points and the skin around his eyes begin to blacken. The voice of reason at the back of his head screamed on repeat that he needed to calm the fuck down. The voice of pure primal rage obliterated it.
This man would pay.
The mortal panted beneath him, skin blanched and eyes staring in wild terror into Veiron’s red ones. His heart hammered, a jittery beat that made Veiron’s smile widen. He should fear. By the time Veiron finished with him, he would be pissing his pants.
Veiron shoved the man down into the tacky bar top, forcing him to bend backwards at a harsh angle. The mortal rallied and swung a punch at Veiron’s shoulder. Veiron felt nothing. He grasped the man’s wrist, twisted it until he screamed, and snarled in satisfaction.
“You ever... touch her again... it will be the last... thing you do. Do you... understand?” It was hard to form sentences when his head was pounding, blood rushing like a torrent through his ears, and he was trying to fight his desire to change completely and rip the man to shreds with his bare hands and trying to retain a little sanity so Erin didn’t see him for what he was.
She couldn’t see his face from where she stood, couldn’t see what this man did when he stared into Veiron’s fiery red eyes and saw the darkness around them and his sharp red teeth.
The lights above the bar dimmed, the area around him darkening as his rage began to slip beyond his control. Veiron sneered, flashing his fangs at the petrified mortal, relishing the gasp he released and the way his heart skipped several beats.
“Please don’t kill me.” Those words were jittery, quiet, a plea that spoke to his sane side and said that he should be satisfied now. He had the mortal quaking. Let him go.
No.
Veiron squeezed his throat harder, feeling bones creak and muscle bruise. The mortal choked and gasped, wheezed as he tried to breathe.
“Veiron?” Erin’s soft voice reached out to him.
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Romance Series Complete Series Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 40